Jaiden and Anjali and the Mythical Kings

♦ ♦

*Thank you to Felix Alexander for this ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Meh….that’s really all I can think when I think of this book. Jaiden and Anjali Medina and the Mythical Kings feels a lot like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, Magnus Chase, and Kane Chronicles. That’s not a bad thing; if anything, that is a good thing. What makes this book so “meh” is that it’s told so quickly and jumps around so much, and there is just so much description and exposition, not in a good way.

When you read a book, you want to be transported to the settings in that book and enjoy the adventure along with the main characters. This is not what happened, what happened was an explanation of every thing. There was very little dialogue, what dialogue there was felt very generic and cliched. Everything was told, rather than shown. You want to see what’s happening in a book, through what the author writes. You don’t want to be told what is happening…that makes it a very boring and very easy read for you.

Jaiden and Anjali have very little background given to them. I’m not invested in these characters, if anything, I’m more invested in the side characters that they meet along the way. They were also given a lot of ability with very little explaination as to how they actually got it. They know how to sword fight perfectly, they can do gymnastics and free running with very little practice before hand, they can leap talk buildings and convince fantastical kings to change their ways. These kids are perfect in the most boring sense of the world.

While Jaiden and Anjali Medina and the Mythical Kings has a lot of potential to be the next Rick Riordan story, it falls far short of that expectation. Excellent premise, failed execution.

Have there ever been books that you were really excited about, but when it came down to it, there were just “meh?” What books were they? Tell me in the comments below!